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Naomi Klein on Becoming a Radical

November 16, 2012

In this excerpt, Naomi Klein says she doesn’t actually think her message is all that radical, but that the “poles have shifted.” She talks about growing up in Canada as the child of two Vietnam War resisters, and how she finds it difficult even today to admit to her American friends that she is a draft dodger’s daughter. She says that she “always says that we came to Canada because of the war, but we stayed for the health care.”

Klein observes: “Americans have to worry so much about the basics from a very young age. Twenty-two year olds have to worry about where’s their health care going to come from and then once you’ve got kids, you’re immediately worried about paying this astronomical price for a good university. … It dampens your compassion for others. It takes so much just to care for your family in this country. I think that that trains you to live inward as opposed to outward.”

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